


Wherever You Go, I'll Follow

by dracoismytrashson (JGogoboots)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Anal Sex, Bottom Isaac Lahey, First Time, France (Country), Germany, Grief/Mourning, Hand Jobs, Isaac Lahey Feels, Isaac Lahey is in France, Isaac is 18 but you know... Argent is middle-aged, Loneliness, M/M, Pining, Spain, fireplaces and country houses and lavender fields, so don't read if you don't like age gaps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:40:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26262799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JGogoboots/pseuds/dracoismytrashson
Summary: With a heavy sigh, Isaac lets the flower drop from his hand and watches it hit the ground.Chris thinks Isaac wants to be loved, but he isn’t sure if it’s worth the risk.Chris can relate.They pretend they're tourists. They pretend they're fine. Sometimes pretending works.
Relationships: Chris Argent/Isaac Lahey
Comments: 25
Kudos: 115





	Wherever You Go, I'll Follow

**Author's Note:**

> I just finished the show, and ever since the end of season three, I haven't been able to get "Isaac and Chris grieve and recover together in France" out of my head. So of course, I did what you do in fandom: I read all the fics and then wrote one too.
> 
> (Regarding Isaac's age: I always feel like the timeline is a little wonky in the show so I think it's plausible haha. Apologies to my AO3 subscribers who are getting this notif for a Teen Wolf rare pair age gap fic and wondering why the fuck I did this... I couldn't help it, okay? I love these two.)

Tonight is their last night in Valencia. They’re bumming around Europe without any long-term plan, riding trains and drinking whiskey (that part’s only for Chris, of course) and waltzing around under the lights of cities so old and full of stories, they feel like people. Living, breathing things that respond to your feet pressed into their stone streets, like the cities  _ know _ you’re there. When Chris looks over at Isaac, the streetlights catching on his wide, bright eyes, he knows he feels it too. 

This weird, ambling journey they’ve found themselves on reminds Chris of Henry Miller. There’s a strange hedonistic tourism to it, like those rambling passages of  _ Tropic of Cancer _ that he read when he wasn’t much older than Isaac is now, words that split him open and made him feel like anything was possible. 

There’s a place they could go... a more permanent place, but Chris can’t see himself there anymore, and anyway, he’s not sure if it would be a danger to Isaac. A wolf in the sacred den of the Argent family… it has more than a whisper of peril about it, a fairytale warning spun in gold on the pages of a medieval book that only a few hands have touched. 

Besides, there’s something comforting about not settling down right now, just letting the continent shake them up like dice in a cup and deposit them in a new city every few days. Maybe it’s a cliché, but Chris feels like if they keep moving, they’ll never have to think for too long, never have to face any more unfair, hard decisions. Like life can be one big long vacation without consequence.

Of course, he knows this isn’t true. He’s lived too long and seen too much death to buy into any unbridled optimism, but when he looks up at Isaac, his eyes closed, a smile on his face as he scents the air, rich and sweet with carnations, gladioli, cyclamens and lilies, all gathered for the Ofrenda de las Flores, Chris thinks maybe they can postpone the inevitable. And really, that’s all he could ask for, isn’t it? A small mercy that might carry him through the next uncertainty, a memory he can hold to his heart like a pressed flower from a book, as fragrant and precious as the air is tonight.

Later, when they watch the fireworks, Isaac flinches. He tries not to let Chris see, but he notices anyway. After a few weeks together, Chris notices quite a lot of things. After all, he’s trained in the art of vigilance. Know thine enemy. 

But it isn’t like that. 

Not anymore. 

It’s just a habit Chris can’t discard, a deeply ingrained sensibility as natural as Isaac’s heightened sense of smell or the way he cowers in crowds, trying to make himself smaller. Less noticeable. Isaac tries to shrink in many ways, and this… hiding his vulnerability from Chris, afraid to be a burden in that way many abused kids are, it’s something Chris keeps seeing.

He presses his hand to the small of Isaac’s back. Not quite an embrace, but a firm press that makes the intent clear.

_ It’s okay. I’m here. _

“I’m fine,” Isaac protests even though Chris hasn’t said anything. Isaac can be sharp when he feels wounded, a prickly boy posturing like the wolf he isn’t. Not really. 

Chris can see why Derek chose him. 

It’s playing with fire and a bit presumptuous, a bit disingenuous to drag a young, tortured, willful boy into a solution obscured by false glamor, a pretty picture that was only a piece of the harsh, complicated reality. It’s a magician's illusion, but the thing about a desperate teen with little else to cling to is that they’ll believe it easily. Chris thinks Isaac was tricked, and it’s one of the more unkind things Derek has done.

Still, he sees why Derek did it. 

There’s a rawness there, a simmering rage that can be harnessed and reclaimed into something that belongs to Isaac and only Isaac. It’s an ugly truth, but most people are fueled by spite, and Isaac’s spite? It’s righteous. It’s justified.

It’s also buried between layers of sweetness that soften the heart Chris is trying so hard to build a fortress around. Isaac leans closer, his arm touching Chris’s shoulder. His eyes flit down to meet Chris’s—Isaac has a few inches on him—and then back to the spectacle in front of them, vibrant blues and purples and reds spraying across the sky like so many chaotic comets. 

When the fireworks subside, the air is gunpowder-heavy, hazy clouds drifting off into the night. Isaac steps away. Chris’s hand falls, hanging at his side without purpose.

A woman walks by, whispering something in excited, staccato Spanish as she hands Isaac a red carnation. He timidly accepts it. A smile blooms on his lips, but it’s gone almost as soon as it appears. He spins the stem of the flower between his thumb and forefinger, watching the petals move with that intense gaze Chris is accustomed to by now. Isaac’s thousand yard stare can be unnerving or endearing. Depends on the moment.

With a heavy sigh, Isaac lets the flower drop from his hand and watches it hit the ground. 

Chris thinks Isaac wants to be loved, but he isn’t sure if it’s worth the risk. 

Chris can relate. 

  
  


***

  
  


“Sorry I didn’t get you your own room. I—” 

“It’s okay,” Isaac is quick to say, smiling for Chris’s benefit as he sits on the edge of the bed and takes off his shoes, that need to please, to be low maintenance, cropping up again. 

Chris was in a rush, it’s true. This trip doesn’t exactly have an itinerary, and the Fallas Festival is one of the biggest events of the year. Places book up fast. 

Still, Chris wonders if he could have tried harder. If he didn’t keep searching simply because he didn’t want to. 

By the time they left Beacon Hills, Chris knew the shape of Isaac’s body, the way his contours folded over Chris’s back or against his chest, hard and soft and warm and reassuring. It was just a natural evolution, the two of them so numb and alone, passing sleepless nights in separate bedrooms until Isaac wandered in one night, nervously rubbing his arm with one hand, his eyes puffy and red-rimmed.

Chris didn’t even speak. He simply lifted the covers, a silent invitation. Isaac took it. He kept taking it night after night, Chris’s arm around his waist, his chin resting on Isaac’s shoulder. 

Chris let it keep happening because he needed it. After Allison died, the air of every room was unbearably cold, and Isaac’s warmth was the only thing that chased it away for a few precious moments. 

But time has passed now. Mourning is still there, of course. Grief is a shadowy spectre that will trail behind Chris wherever he goes for the rest of his days, but in his mind, the grace period has passed. He can’t justify sleeping next to Isaac anymore. He dreads the moment comfort becomes something else entirely. Something he shouldn’t want from Isaac.

Since they left Beacon Hills, he’s been good about the hotels, careful to get separate rooms, careful to give Isaac his own space, careful not to ask for anything from him. Until now.

If Chris is being honest with himself, he suffers from a bit of the same self-sufficiency syndrome as Isaac, and he already feels guilty about how much he’s leaned on him.

_ So much for that,  _ Chris thinks as he slides in bed next to Isaac, keeping a deliberate distance between them, adamant that he will not bridge the gap. He will not roll over and envelop Isaac in his needy arms, siphoning his heat like nature’s best sedative.

“Chris?” Isaac whispers in the darkness. His name sounds like a plaintive plea on Isaac’s lips. 

Chris looks over, Isaac’s eyes, his human eyes, glistening in the dark, and knows what the question means. Isaac won’t ask directly. He doesn’t want to be a bother. He never does. 

“Come here,” Chris whispers back, opening his arms in just the way he promised himself he wouldn’t.

When their bodies meet, the relief is such a heady thing, instant and immense and so good, that they both sigh gently, settling together like two people who have done this many times before.

They have.

And while Chris is trying hard not to think about it, he knows they probably will again.

Chris falls asleep thinking that maybe it’s okay. Maybe he shouldn’t punish himself for needing someone. Maybe it doesn’t matter if that someone is a young werewolf, a boy tipping into adulthood the way Chris’s dead daughter never will.

  
  


***

  
  


Europe in the spring is almost manic, a whirlwind of color that moves too fast to catch every detail, swarms of people everywhere, celebrations endless and plentiful.

Even though crowds are a bit of a challenge for Isaac, Chris thought the Hamburg Dom would be fun for him. There’s a whimsy about it, an oversized carnival that Chris thought might capture a bit of the carefree childhood Isaac never had. 

Now they’re on a ferris wheel, high above the German city, the sky fading into purplish-pink hues, and Isaac’s laughing as he tells Chris about getting sick on cotton candy when he was eleven, gorging himself and making the unfortunate decision to get on a Tilt-A-Whirl right afterward. Chris is glad to know Isaac’s formative years had a few bright spots peeking out of the darkness.

“What?” Isaac cants his head as he smiles at Chris. Isaac has many different smiles, and Chris is cataloguing them all. The conspiratorial smirk, the shy boyish grin when someone does something nice for him, the uncertain smile meant to appease. This one is a little different, and Chris tries to tell himself he’s mistaken about the reason why.

“Nothing. It’s just nice to see you laugh.”

“You too.”

“I wasn’t sure I still could,”  Chris says, trying not to think about the way Isaac was the first to get him to laugh again and the first to get him to cry too. He tries not to think about it, but he fails miserably.

As the ferris wheel pauses at the very top, Isaac rests his head on Chris’s shoulder, and Chris remembers being in this exact position but reversed. His head on Isaac’s shoulder. Isaac telling him it’s okay. That he needs to cry. That he needs to let it all out.

_ “What good does it do? You’re young. You don’t know... crying doesn’t change anything. Crying doesn’t bring her back,” _ he’d protested, but he’d clutched onto Isaac all the same, letting Isaac wrap his arms around him and rub soothing circles into his back.

_ “Neither does pushing through and pretending everything isn’t terrible. You need to do this,” _ Isaac had responded, and later, watching Isaac move around the kitchen, making dinner as he assured Chris he could take care of it, that he needed to get some food in him, Chris marveled at how wise this young man was. How much he saw and how much he understood. 

He looks at Isaac now, his smile soft and pliant, and thinks about how he’s always been like this. Even when he was trying on different personalities to see what would fit—the brooding, cocky beta in Derek’s pack, the lost boy looking for leadership in Scott, the snarky, defensive stance that still bubbles up sometimes—this was underneath it all. The gentlest kid willing to help in any way he can, willing to follow Chris across the globe without even knowing where he’d take them. He thinks about Isaac’s father, and how anyone could ever want to hurt this boy so badly, to taint this sweet-natured gift of a human who fed Chris when he couldn’t eat, who held him while he cried.

It makes Chris want to spend the rest of his life protecting him. After all, what else is left to do? Chris’s family is gone. Hunting lost its appeal long ago. What nobler purpose could there be than making sure Isaac keeps smiling like that?

“Thanks for taking me here,” Isaac says, folding his arms over the bars and leaning forward to take in the view. 

“Thanks for letting an old man drag you across Europe while he’s having a breakdown.”

Isaac laughs again and leans back. There’s that smirk. It’s flirtatious, but not in an intentional way. It’s just a natural charisma finding its way onto Isaac’s lips, and Chris is betting Isaac doesn’t even know that about himself. He’s not confident enough to believe in his own charm (all that act with Derek was just that—an act), and Chris’s heart aches when he thinks of the reason for that.

“You’re not an old man. Although that Marlboro man beard you had going for a while was getting a little like… creepy guy who lives in a cave.” Isaac playfully bumps his shoulder against Chris’s, and they both laugh. “Glad you gave that thing a fucking trim.” 

It’s progress that they can joke about that, right? It must be. Chris was rougher in those first few weeks. It’s not like he hasn’t always been a bit solemn, but it used to be controlled. A formidable hunter’s focus. After Allison, it became something different, a quiet lonely kind of stoicism. He didn’t shave, he barely showered, and Isaac is right. He started to look like some smoking drifter in a noir, the kind who passes through town with cryptic phrases about a mysterious past he refuses to speak about. 

They go quiet and just watch the city for a moment. Families scatter off to different corners of the festival, bodies and color everywhere they look. 

“So… not that I don’t love this sorta endless vacation thing, but… what happens next?”

It’s a good question. A fair question. But it’s also one Chris doesn’t really have an answer to so he does what most people do to survive life: he makes it up as he goes along.

“I have a house… in France. We could go there. If you want to.” It isn’t only the old Argent house that he’s avoiding. There’s also another place, a place that wasn’t a hunter home but a family’s home. A place whose walls echo with the laughter of Victoria and Allison. He isn’t sure which option is worse, but the thing about the latter is that it once  _ was _ a home. It was a house Chris didn’t inherit. A house Chris made his own. 

Maybe it can be again. Maybe he’s put it off long enough. Maybe it’s time to step into those dusty walls and see what awaits him. Running isn’t getting him anywhere. He’s smart enough to know that.

“Sure. Might be nice to stay in one place for a while, you know?” Isaac smiles, and although it’s the uncertain kind, apparently he’s still willing to take Chris’s lead. To plunge into the murky future together.

It ignites a small flame of hope inside Chris. 

Yes… maybe it’s time.

  
  


*** 

  
  


The house is on the edge of Aubagne. Chris wanted a place in Provence, somewhere to retreat with his family when they needed a proper escape from the world. The ancestral Argent home is only about an hour to the west, a distance that Chris can  _ feel _ like heavy rain clouds gathering above his head. It’s probably just a mental thing. Even the most imposing of buildings can’t stretch their stone columns and reach across a few hundred kilometres. 

When they walk inside, everything is sitting under months of dust accumulation. They open all the windows to air it out. Chris sets to work on wiping surfaces and freshening up the place in any way he can. He doesn’t tell Isaac to join in but is completely unsurprised when he does, his nervous feet bouncing for something to do as he asks Chris how he can help. 

Between the two of them, it doesn’t take long until everything is buttery and warm just like Chris remembered it: the pine floors stained into a rich honey color, the sun streaming in through high, clear windows, the furniture red and plush and inviting. It’s somewhere between a cabin and a Victorian, an odd yet homey marriage of styles whose construction Chris oversaw himself. He wanted something built to his specifications, true ownership in a way he’d never had before.

Coming from a family with a legacy means treading on old, hallowed ground, sharing spaces that have been passed down from generation to generation. Maybe it was borne of a desire to excise himself from all things Gerard, but Chris wanted a piece of France that just belonged to Victoria, Allison, and him. 

As he stares at the couch in the living room, afterimages of Allison running across his mind, her curled up with a book as the fire roars, he thinks it was a grave mistake to come here. But then Isaac plops down in the very same spot, swinging his legs over the arm of the couch, and Chris is happy to see him there. It’s strange. It should hurt more, but it doesn’t. Isaac looks natural there. At peace. Content. And the thought of someone else being content here, someone Chris cares about, heals the wounded memory just a little. 

He gives Isaac his own room, a spare bedroom that doesn’t have any fraught history attached to it, but still, every night, Isaac finds his way into Chris’s bed. 

Chris doesn’t turn him away. 

  
  


***

  
  


“Come inside! You should eat,” Chris calls to Isaac, shading his eyes from the noon sun as he peers up at Isaac on the roof, scraping the rain gutters with a spade in his gloved hands. Apparently, they’re just going to keep trading off on who reminds who to eat. 

Chris notes that Isaac shed his shirt at some point, sweat pearling on his lean body, gathering in the hollow just above his collarbone, the dip at the base of his spine. He averts his eyes as Isaac hops down effortlessly—sometimes Chris almost forgets that he’s a wolf—and walks back inside.

Isaac leaves to clean up (thankfully coming back with a shirt on), and Chris arranges all the food on the table. It’s a hot day, and he thought some lighter picnic food would be nice: fresh fruit, a smattering of cheese, charcuterie, olives, and bread. 

Judging from the way Isaac’s devouring it, it must have been a wise choice. He looks up at Chris and chuckles softly.

“What?”

“It’s just… since I’ve been living with you awhile, I’ve noticed how you eat. This is, like, the most meat I’ve ever seen you eat. You used to shop at Whole Foods back in Beacon Hills, didn’t you?” Isaac smiles crookedly and raises an eyebrow, and Chris smiles in spite of himself.

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re a little bougie, and you like egg white omelettes with organic spinach.”

“There’s nothing wrong with vegetables and lean proteins.”

“Egg whites have about as much flavor as sand.”

“Yeah, well… we don’t all have the metabolism of teenage werewolves.”

“You look good to me.” As soon as Isaac says it, he blushes and reaches for his water glass, but he loses his grip and it shatters on the floor. “Oh God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Don’t—I-I’ll clean it up. I’m sorry, I—”

“Isaac, it’s fine. It’s just a glass. Here, I’ll get a broom.” Chris goes to get a broom from the closet, and when he comes back, Isaac is nearly hyperventilating as he picks up shards of glass with his fingers. “Hey hey, stop that. You’ll cut yourself.”

“It’s fine. I’ll heal,” Isaac chokes out as he carries the shards to the trash can. 

Chris sweeps up the rest of the mess as fast as he can, stealing glances at Isaac as he does. Isaac is bent over the sink, washing his bloody, shaking hands. As soon as Chris finishes, he walks over and rests a hand on Isaac’s shoulder.

“You’re not mad?” Isaac asks, not looking at Chris, his shoulders rising and falling with every ragged breath.

“No, of course not. Why would I—” Chris doesn’t finish that sentence because he knows why. He knows who in Isaac’s past would have been angry over a harmless mistake like this. “Listen to me, Isaac. Look at me,” Chris gently turns Isaac’s head toward him, but Isaac keeps his eyes down, “I would never yell at you over something like this, okay? Actually, the  _ only _ time I’d yell at all is if you were in danger and needed to hear me. Do you understand?”

Isaac nods, eyes cautiously rising to meet Chris’s gaze. He’s still trembling all over, his lower lip quivering, his hand curled around the edge of the sink so tightly, his knuckles have gone white. Chris does the only thing he can think of.

He hugs Isaac, a grounding but gentle embrace, careful not to squeeze too hard, not to do anything that might unsettle him further. 

“Thank you,” Isaac softly speaks into the collar of Chris’s t-shirt, winding his arms around Chris’s lower back. He can feel Isaac’s moist breath against his neck. “I… I’m so glad you let me come with you.”

“Me too.”

Chris says it because it’s true.

  
  


***

  
  


They both like manual labor because it keeps their hands busy and their minds quiet. There are all kinds of small projects Chris always meant to do on the house but never had the time. There was always a new adversary, a new evil to combat, and besides that, there was Allison to think of. They needed to spend the majority of their time in the states so she could go to school and have the most normal life Chris could offer her.

It makes him feel a twinge of guilt to work on this house now, as though he doesn’t deserve to indulge in such selfish endeavors. 

Even though he rationally knows this would never happen, he doesn’t want to wake up one day and forget his child. He wants to honor her always, and it’s hard to know what that means anymore, what shape grief takes when you start to slowly become whole again.

Well… as whole as one can be after such a horrific thing. Chris knows he won’t ever be the shape he was before Allison, just as he will never be the shape he was before Victoria.  Losing a partner and losing a child are about the two hardest losses one can weather, and Chris has been dealt both blows in quick succession. The pieces it carves out of you can’t ever be regained. You just learn how to live without them.

Chris hammers a nail into the shed they’re building. He’s always wanted one for firewood and other things that need protection from the elements, things that don’t quite have a rightful place in the house, but it never seemed feasible before. Not for a place he spent such little time.

His gaze shifts to where Isaac is raising a beam up and bringing it flush against another. Chris looks at his work-strong body, new definition popping up along his arms and chest, proof of all the hours spent on this. 

Chris hammers nails into boards until the fire in his groin subsides.

  
  


***

  
  


Chris notices Isaac leaving to wander around the grounds, always coming back an hour or two later. It takes him a few days to ask if he can join him. Part of him fears treading on Isaac’s solitude. After all, Chris has always been a bit of a solitary creature himself. He understands the  need to roam, to cover miles of ground with your feet until the tangled parts of your mind unfold into something manageable. 

But when he asks, Isaac vehemently agrees, and so they begin walking together, going further each time, exploring parts of the property Chris has never even touched before. They’re never very talkative, but that’s fine. It’s enough to have the silent companionship. Chris imagines they’re both unraveling problems in their separate heads as they walk, partners in quiet contemplation.

One day, Chris decides to take Isaac to one of the lavender fields.

“It doesn’t look real?!” Isaac says, grinning as he runs his hands over the fluffy purple flowers, wading into the field as Chris hangs back a few paces.

“I know. It’s one of the best things about Provence.”

“Can I lie down in it?” Isaac asks, sounding so young, it makes Chris’s heart ache.

“Sure, why not?”

“Will you do it too?”

“I don’t know,” Chris laughs, feeling much too old to do a thing like that, but then he looks at Isaac’s expectant face and thinks maybe that’s precisely the reason he  _ should _ do it. As we age, we forget what it’s like to bask in the simple things. “Okay, fine.”

They lie down between two rows, and Chris starts to complain about getting dirty, about rocks poking his back.

“Shut up. We’re lying in a field of lavender. This is amazing,” Isaac says, smiling up at the waning sun of early evening.

“You’re right.”

They lie there long enough to see the sky fade from blue to orangey-red. 

“How close were you and Allison?” When Chris shifts, turning his head to look at Isaac, the lavender tickles his cheek.

Isaac bites his lip. Opens his mouth only to close it again. 

“There’s no wrong answer. I’m not trying to grill you.”

_ I’m just finally ready to ask. To maybe talk about her a little without splitting in two. _

“Honestly? Not very. I mean… we were friends.” Isaac frowns, chewing on his bottom lip again while he considers the question. “Good friends, toward the end. But she was still in love with Scott, you know? And I was… I don’t know what I was.” Isaac lets out a sad little laugh.

“Lonely?” Chris ventures.

“Yeah…” Isaac turns his head, and they’re facing each other now, on their backs in a lavender field with dusk rapidly drawing its curtain across the sky. It’s strange to talk about this and feel a twinge of peace, but Chris does. Maybe he’s finally reaching the point where he wants to talk. Where he  _ needs _ to. “I think she was too. I think that’s mostly why we were together for a little bit. Not that I didn’t—I liked her. I wasn’t—”

“Isaac, it’s fine. I’m not looking for you to tell me she was the love of your life.” He knows Isaac cared about her. Isaac shed his fair share of tears too.

“What  _ are _ you looking for?”

Chris thinks for a second, not entirely sure what to say.

“Sometimes, when your life is always in peril, one hunt after the next, no stillness… it makes it hard to know what’s happening with each other. You lose track of each other outside of that part of life. It makes me wonder what I missed in the last year. She was never a distant person, but… she was still private. Solemn. Strong.”

“Like father, like daughter.” Isaac’s eyes are closed, and he’s very near to Chris, his body heat palpable, the edges of their shoulders butting against one another. 

“Yeah… I guess so.” Chris smiles and watches the clouds drift across the sky. The moon is there in the distance, high and bright and ready to take the sun’s place.

***

  
  


“Are these yours?” 

“Yeah,” Chris answers, leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed as he watches Isaac sift through a crate of records.

“Really…” Isaac says with a touch of disbelief, holding a copy of Hüsker Dü’s  _ New Day Rising, _ flipping from the front to the back cover.

“Surprised?” Chris sits down on the floor next to him.

“You don’t really seem like the kind of guy who has hobbies. I mean, like, outside of heavy firearms and supernatural stuff. And egg white omelettes,” Isaac says with a mischievous smile.

“I was a teenager once too, Isaac. And stop knocking my omelettes.” Chris plucks the record from Isaac’s hands and puts it on the turntable, dropping the needle carefully, the bombastic strains of the title track filling the room.

“It’s kind of angry,” Isaac observes, but he’s smiling when he says it.

“I wasn’t the happiest kid.” The truth about Chris’s upbringing is that it probably comes closer to Isaac’s than he’d like to admit. He doesn’t dwell on it much anymore because what’s the point? Gerard is who he is, and Chris will never get any sort of apology or closure from a man that unhinged and unwilling to cop to any wrongdoing. A long time ago, Chris figured the best revenge was to not repeat his father’s mistakes. To not fuck up with Allison the way Gerard fucked up with him. No matter what’s happened, at least Chris can say he accomplished that. “My dad was an asshole too.”

“So I’ve heard.” They exchange sad smiles, and Isaac lies down on the floor. “I like this song.”

Chris lies down next to him and lets the lyrics of a song he used to listen to every day, furious and sixteen and driving around and around, hoping he would never have to go home. Hoping he’d take a turn around a bend and end up somewhere else.

_ I never look back at it, but it's always in front of me _

_ It's always worth the hurt, but I know it's hurting me _

_ I'll never let go of it because it's all that's going for me _

_ I'll put it in the past when the past is history _

  
  


***

  
  


There’s a little cafe they’ve started going to for dinner on Saturdays. It’s owned by a couple not much older than Chris, and there’s a terrasse that opens onto the brick street, the citizens of Aubagne strolling by on their way to the market, the scents of fresh produce and baking bread in the air. The food is incomparably delicious: local cheese boards, brick oven pizzas with fresh garlic, prosciutto, and arugula, seared lamb chops with compound butter, and the best crème brûlée Chris has ever tasted. 

The couple’s teenage son and daughter work there on the weekends, a slightly unwelcome reminder that Isaac is not in school and Chris hasn’t done anything about it. As he sends Isaac off with the money to pay the bill, he makes a mental note to do something about that soon. 

A few minutes pass, and when Chris looks around to see what’s taking him so long, he finds the owner’s teenage daughter flirting with Isaac, her hand on his arm as he blushes and looks down at the floor.

“You could’ve gone for it,” Chris says when Isaac returns, sipping his wine. “We have phones. You’re free to explore. Just tell me where you’re going so I don’t worry.” 

“Hooking up with strangers isn’t really my thing,” Isaac mutters, pushing a leftover bit of crème brûlée around with a spoon. 

Chris doesn’t think the owner’s daughter qualifies as a stranger exactly, but he doesn’t press the issue.

“What is your thing?” he asks instead. There’s a long pause, and Chris hates himself for wishing Isaac would say  _ “you are.”  _

“Being with someone I trust,” Isaac says, and Chris thinks maybe that’s the same thing.   
  


***

  
  


“I regret to inform you… that I’m drunk,” Chris says, raising his wine glass. He’s lying down on the floor in front of the fire, debating shedding the cozy sweater that’s become too warm now that the flames are roaring and alcohol is coursing through his veins. It gets chilly at night in the spring, but Chris likes it. These days, he’s grateful for creature comforts, and bundling in front of a fire in this house, the French countryside outside their door, eases his aches a bit.

Isaac laughs from his position under a blanket on the couch.

“How does it feel?”

“Good,” Chris says simply. It’s the first time in a long time that he’s let himself drink enough to truly feel it. It’s a slippery slope. He never wants to find himself drunk and dejected, descending further into a depression hole he can’t climb back out of.

“No, I mean, like… specifically?”

“That’s right… you can’t do this, can you?” It’s not like Chris hasn’t had every werewolf fact, ranging from the inconsequential minutiae to the vital life-saving information, jammed into his head for decades, but it completely slipped his mind. 

“Nope.” Isaac shakes his head. “Healing factor.”

“It’s… warm. Tingly. Mildly euphoric.”

“That sounds like side effects on a bottle. Not exactly what I was looking for.”

“Okay okay, it’s…” Chris licks his lips and sits up, slinging his arms around his knees and thinking for a minute. “When it’s the right level, that sweet spot in the middle, it’s like… the first time you kiss a girl you’re crazy about. That giddy feeling afterward, the one that makes you feel like you could do anything.”

Isaac’s face falls, and Chris wonders if he’s stepped into something there. Was Allison the last girl Isaac felt that way about?

But the sadness dissipates quickly, replaced by a smile as Isaac pats the cushion next to him. 

“Why are you down there? Come up.”

Chris is marinated in red wine, and Isaac is the loveliest he’s ever been, his features bathed in firelight, his smile enticing and tender, his broad shoulders covered in a cable-knit sweater. The sweater is one of Chris’s, and seeing Isaac in his clothes… it does things to him. It’s beyond dangerous. Chris has been on hunts surrounded by a herd of homicidal creatures that were less dangerous than what’s happening in this living room tonight.

Despite all of the alarm bells firing off in his head, Chris walks over to the couch and sits next to Isaac, abandoning his wine glass on the end table. Isaac lifts up the blanket, and even though Chris is plenty warm, he gets under it anyway, glad to have the excuse to be closer.

Isaac shifts, leaning his head on Chris’s shoulder, and the tingles running through Chris’s body, the goosebumps on his arm… it’s all so slippery and precarious, but he wraps his arm around Isaac’s shoulder and runs his fingers through his hair. Isaac makes the sweetest little sigh, a sound that travels straight to Chris’s groin, and Chris can’t help the idiotic words that tumble out of his mouth.

“Are you alright, sweetheart?”

“Mmm.”

Chris feels Isaac shiver with pleasure at that word, and he doesn’t have to be a werewolf to tell that Isaac’s heart is racing. Isaac’s hand crawls across Chris’s stomach, dipping under the hem of his sweater and stroking his fevered skin, soft and slow. An exploration. A tentative question. When Chris doesn’t move, Isaac keeps going, his fingers reaching up to Chris’s chest, grazing a hard nipple as Isaac lifts his head enough to mouth at Chris’s neck.

“Isaac…” Chris gasps, and there should be a  _ “stop, we can’t do this”  _ attached to that word, but there isn’t. He doesn’t say anything else. He just lets Isaac’s warm, moist lips make their way to his own. 

It’s a clumsy first kiss, but it doesn’t matter because they’ve both been aching for it for so long. It doesn’t matter because Chris hasn’t been touched in so many months, he’s stopped counting. When Isaac pulls back, Chris expects to see that deer-in-the-headlights uncertainty, but Isaac is unpredictable. He’s confused and naive and scared sometimes, but he can be bold and brave too. He wouldn’t have stayed alive this long if he weren’t.

Isaac’s eyes are brimming with so much hunger that Chris is surprised the beta gold isn’t shining through. He looks like he could taste every part of Chris and still want more.

It’s been so long since anyone looked at Chris that way.

Chris wants him. God, he wants him more than he can say, but the nagging, guilty part of his brain finally wakes up.

“We shouldn’t do this.” It comes out in a breathy rush of syllables as he gently pushes at Isaac’s shoulder, trying to get some distance. 

“Why?” Isaac says it defiantly, a wolfish stubbornness Chris has seen in him before. 

“You know why.”

“I know the reasons other people would give a shit. But we’re halfway across the world. Alone. In the middle of nowhere.” 

“You’re just a kid.” Even though it’s something he’s repeated to himself a thousand times, now that he’s actually saying it, the excuse sounds thin. 

“After everything I’ve been through, that’s what you think? I haven’t felt like a kid in a really long time. And if it’s some arbitrary number that bothers you, that passed a few weeks ago, so what’s left? I sleep in your bed every night, Chris. What’s really the problem?”

“You had a birthday, and you didn’t tell me?”

Isaac shrugs, and though he’s trying to be casual about it, Chris can tell the old trauma still stings.

“Birthdays weren’t exactly big in my family. I got used to ignoring them.”

“You don’t have to do that anymore, Isaac.” Chris cups Isaac’s cheek, stroking his thumb across his cheekbone, and he knows his will to stop this has evaporated. It might come back in the morning, but right now, it’s gone.

“You know I can smell it on you? How much you want this?”

Wolf senses: helpful in a crisis but the bane of Chris’s existence too. How long has Isaac noticed?

“What do I smell like?”

“God, it’s like—” Isaac’s eyes go hazy and heavy-lidded, “like spring. Like flowers and the dirt and the sun warming them. Like life and death and everything all at once. It’s—it’s so good. I love your smell. You have no idea how hard it is not to just bury my face in your neck all the time.”

“Isaac…” Chris runs his thumb along Isaac’s bottom lip, and Isaac’s tongue shyly darts out to lick across it. 

“Can I kiss you again? Please?”

Chris nods without really deciding to. He’s half drunk on wine, half drunk on the heat of Isaac’s gaze. This time, the kiss is pure electricity, Chris’s mouth opening to Isaac right away, Isaac crawling into his lap, his hands finding their way under Chris’s sweater again. Chris twines his fingers in Isaac’s hair, his other hand skating up and down his back. His skin is soft, and his mouth is hot, and Chris is old enough to be his father, but he can’t find it in himself to care anymore. Not when Isaac has been there for him during the loneliest, darkest time of his life. There by Chris’s side without complaint, patient and kind and understanding of Chris’s pain in a way that surprises him every day. 

“You taste as good as you smell,” Isaac murmurs, undulating his hips in Chris’s lap, making Chris too painfully hard to ignore.

“Do you want—”

“Yes,” Isaac gasps before Chris can even finish the thought.

“Let’s go upstairs.” 

Isaac jumps up and starts toward the stairs. Once he gets there, his hand curved around the banister, he turns around to make sure Chris is following. When they get to Chris’s room, Isaac takes his shirt off and sits on the edge of the bed, eyes seeking approval.

“Do you have,” Chris shucks off his shirt and pushes Isaac onto the bed, “any idea how fucking beautiful you are?”

Isaac’s always stunning, but he makes the prettiest picture right now, bathed in moonlight and spread across Chris’s bed. Like something out of a Henry Scott Tuke painting. Pale with flushed cheeks. His curls fanning out on the sheets.

Isaac shakes his head, his eyes hungrily roaming Chris’s chest. Chris gets on top of him, and Isaac wastes no time touching everywhere he can reach, greedy hands covering every inch of Chris’s chest and back.

“You’re perfect,” Isaac whispers before he places his hand on the back of Chris’s neck and pulls him down for another eager, wet kiss. He’s making soft moans into Chris’s mouth now, and Chris wonders what he’ll sound like when he comes, if he’ll gasp Chris’s name and hold him close. “C-can I touch it?”

Isaac’s hesitant fingers are ghosting across Chris’s crotch, a barely-there touch on the denim. The innocence of the question turns Chris on, but it turns his self loathing up too. Isaac has probably never been with a man before, and Chris feels conflicted about how delicious that is, how untouched Isaac is and how very much Chris wants to ruin him.

“You can do anything you want, baby.”

Isaac smiles a little and slowly undoes the button and zipper of Chris’s jeans, palming his erection through his boxers. They both moan at the contact, and suddenly, everything speeds up. Chris stands up to get undressed, and Isaac does the same, neither of them taking their eyes off each other.

When they collide again, it’s skin on skin in every possible way, and Chris almost weeps at the sensation of his naked body sliding against Isaac’s. He didn’t realize how much he’d missed this, being close to someone, sharing his body with them. The last time was with Victoria, which is another wound Chris doesn’t want to open, not right now. It wasn’t like he couldn’t have found comfort in someone’s arms after that, but his mind and body never settled down long enough to think about it. There was always something bigger, a greater purpose to serve than his own paltry needs, and that’s the thing with Chris: he uses the hunter life as a way to deflect from his own problems, a way to shift the focus of his own life away from himself, and now... now all the running has caught up to him. The body count, the wreckage of his life, is too large to ignore. He’s lost so much. Sometimes he thinks loss and pain are all he knows. He and Isaac are alike that way. 

Chris thinks they can change that together. He thinks they already are.

Chris maneuvers them onto their sides so he can get a better angle when he wraps his hand around Isaac’s cock. Isaac mirrors his position, and they settle into a languid rhythm, just exploring each other at first, kissing and touching, Chris’s leg settling between Isaac’s thighs. Chris can tell Isaac is nervous about what to do, stroking up and down Chris’s cock and watching for his reaction, eager for some clue about whether or not he’s doing it right. 

“Don’t worry so much,” Chris reassures him with a soft kiss. “I like your hands on me.”

“You feel so fucking good… I can’t believe you’re letting me touch you.” Isaac lets out a lovely whine as Chris picks up the pace, twisting his hand on the upstroke, his thumb sliding over Isaac’s wet slit. Chris can tell the moment when Isaac finally lets go and stops thinking, starts letting his instincts drive him as he pumps his fist up and down, stopping to roll Chris’s balls in his hand, to stroke the sensitive skin on the inside of his thigh before getting back to it. 

Chris is getting close, and he can tell Isaac is too, his taut stomach tensing, his breaths coming out short and shallow.

“Bite my neck,” Chris demands, and Isaac’s eyes go wide. Truth be told, Chris is surprised at the words too. Even though it’s not his fangs and he’s not an alpha, there’s an immense trust in this, letting the wolf bite him. It’s a meaningful thing, and they both know it.

Isaac teases him at first, leading up to it with kisses and licks. By the time Isaac bites down, Chris is shaking with anticipation. Chris comes so hard, his vision whites out for a second, his nails digging into Isaac’s shoulder, Isaac’s name on his lips. It isn’t long before Isaac tips over the edge too, kissing Chris so hard, it leaves them both breathless. He spills hot and sticky over Chris’s hand, and he moans sweeter than a wolf has any right to, pretty, desperate sounds that Chris is going to remember for a long time.

“I made you come,” Isaac says with a kind of wonderment as he nuzzles in Chris’s neck. 

Chris smiles in the dark and kisses Isaac’s sweaty temple, running his hands up and down his back.

It isn’t until Isaac is asleep and everything is quiet and lonely that Chris thinks  _ oh God, what have I done? _

  
  


***

  
  


Chris hasn’t gone in Allison’s bedroom since they arrived at the house in Aubagne, but he’s standing at the edge now, the door open as he debates whether or not to walk inside. It’s not as painful as it was to empty her bedroom back in Beacon Hills, a wall-to-wall square of memories that seemed to mock his grief. This room was lightly used so it’s a stripped down version, like the bare bones of a thing, the building blocks of something that never quite formed.

Still, it’s a reminder all the same, and Chris figures it makes sense that he finally wandered in here now. He thinks he wanted the reminder because waking up next to Isaac and knowing what they’d done pulled the loose threads of his newfound happiness. He doesn’t know specifically what happened between Isaac and Allison, but he knows enough to feel a strange mixture of guilt and grief at the thought of touching this boy who touched his daughter. On top of that is a layer of regret for having slept with someone he’s supposed to be taking care of. He feels like he’s done something profoundly wrong, and maybe, in some strange twisted way, he thinks being in an old space of hers will help him figure out what to do, like she can guide him.

In the sober light of day, everything looks different, and if Chris is being honest with himself, the idea of loving Isaac this way, of letting himself get even more attached when he knows what it means to lose someone… it’s more than Chris’s damaged heart can take.

  
  


***

  
  


“Morning,” Isaac cheerfully says as he breezes into the kitchen and fills a cup with coffee from the French press.

Chris has already been up for hours, and while he hates to burst Isaac’s morning-after glow so soon, he feels like the words will eat him from the inside out if he doesn’t say them.

“Isaac… we should talk.”

Isaac pauses, his cup halfway to his mouth. 

“Thought we already had this conversation.”

“Why don’t you sit down, Isaac.” Chris is seated at the kitchen table, and he gestures to the empty wooden chair across from him. 

“I’m good.” Isaac takes a gulp of coffee, sets the mug down on the kitchen counter, and crosses his arms. There it is again. The bullheaded wolf. Chris doesn’t know if it’s really a part of Isaac or if it’s something he conjures up to assure himself that he can’t be hurt.

“Fine.” Chris sighs and runs a hand down his face, forcing himself to look into Isaac’s glittering blue eyes. He deserves that much. “What happened last night… it can’t happen again. I’m supposed to be taking care of you not—”

“What?” Isaac laughs, but it isn’t a pleasant kind of laughter. It’s all acid. “Have I ever asked you to take care of me? Just because you used to be someone’s parent doesn’t mean you’re now mine. It doesn’t work like that. And just because I had a shit father doesn’t mean I’m looking for a replacement.”

“That’s not what I meant. I just…” Chris takes a breath. How is it that he’s been thinking about what to say all morning and still the words are swimming in his head, an incoherent soup he can’t make sense of? “You know what? Maybe that is what I mean. Isaac, you’ve never had anyone stable in your life. Maybe you’re making something out of this that isn’t there just because you want to grab at stability. And I don’t blame you for that, but you can’t—you can’t reach for the first good thing you find just because you think it’s the answer to all your problems. And neither can I. That’s how people get hurt.” 

Isaac’s lip is quivering, but his eyes are volcanic. Determined. 

“No. No, no, you don’t get to tell me how I feel. I feel good around you. I always have. Everything about you, your voice, the way you’re so…” Isaac’s eyes soften just then, and it breaks Chris’s heart. “You’re in control. You think before you do things. You’re careful. You’re smart, you’re strong, you've gotten through so much, and you haven’t let it turn you bitter. You’re still so loving and giving and just... solid. Despite everything.”

“Like an anchor?” 

“Stop! This isn’t about me being a wolf. I’m not looking for a new alpha.”

“You don’t know what you’re looking for.” Is Chris really talking about Isaac? Or are those words meant for himself? 

“God, what the fuck would you know about how I feel anyway? I’m not the one giving off loud signals every time I feel something. You wanna talk about who in this room doesn’t know what they want? Then let’s talk about you, Chris. I know how you feel about me. The room is fucking  _ full _ of it every time we’re together. This isn’t about me. It’s about you.” Isaac points an accusatory finger, and Chris tries not to cower underneath it. He’s not sure he can deny any of that.

“I think… you’re looking for somewhere to belong, for someone or something to fill that void and give you the home you never had. I can’t be that.” 

“Then why did you bring me here?! You think I’m confused about what you are to me, but what am I to you?” 

“I didn’t... I didn’t want to be alone. And I didn’t want you to be either,” Chris says, and it’s the simple, sad truth.

“Yeah? Well, maybe you should’ve thought a little farther ahead. Buy a fucking puppy next time.” 

Isaac is rushing out the door before Chris can say anything. Chris jogs out the backdoor, but Isaac is already running across the grass and into the woods. 

“Isaac!”

When Isaac turns around, his eyes are gold, and his fangs have dropped. He growls a warning to Chris and runs away. 

Chris lets him. What right does he have to chase after him when he’s the reason Isaac’s running?

  
  
  


***

  
  


Chris assumed Isaac would come back.

He figured he just needed a good long run to calm himself down, but that he’d come back within an hour or two. Sure, he’d probably be sullen, avoiding Chris in a way he completely deserves, but… he’d be  _ back. _ He’d be there, safely tucked away in the walls of their house.

Even though he’s quickly spiraling down a dark web of “what if”s about Isaac’s whereabouts, Chris still smiles at the fact that he now thinks of this place as “their” house. 

And why shouldn’t he?

There are traces of Isaac everywhere: his jacket slung over the back of the couch, his scent in Chris’s sheets, his abandoned book on the end table in the living room, black bookmark peeking out between the top of the pages. They’ve made a life together, and looking at that life without Isaac there really hammers home how epically stupid Chris was to say what he did this morning. 

Standing on the edge of their empty bedroom—it  _ is _ theirs, Chris knows that now—is like being a stranger looking in on someone else’s home. It shifts his perspective, stepping outside of his own convoluted head for a minute to see that it doesn’t matter if he tries to deny what’s happening between them. It won’t make it any less true, and Chris is consumed with a horrific panic as he realizes he chased away the one person most precious to him. Isaac is the only thing he has left in this world, and now he’s gone and Chris is spiraling, spiraling until his heart feels like it’s going to burst out of his chest.

Finally, when he can’t take it anymore, he tucks his gun down the back of his jeans and goes to look for him. 

Luckily, no one has more practice in tracking than Chris. As he follows Isaac’s footprints, he curses himself for not leaving sooner. Anything could have happened to Isaac. He could be lost, fallen down a ravine. He could have shifted and lost control. He could have hurt someone. He could have hurt himself, but no, Chris had to give him space. He’s a fucking idiot, and he will never forgive himself if something’s happened to Isaac.

Chris doesn’t know how long he’s been walking and calling Isaac’s name, but it has to have been a couple of hours because the sun is beginning to set and Chris’s anxiety is a living, writhing animal inside him, trying to batter it’s way out. The tracks he was following doubled back and now he can’t tell if he’s ended up going in circles. This is much easier to do with a clear head, but Chris’s mind is chaotic and wild right now. 

He stops and tries to collect himself, tries to breathe and just  _ think.  _ He sifts through every memory of their walks around the property, trying to figure out where Isaac might have gone, and then he gets an idea. It might be a dead end, but it’s better than the nothing he’s uncovered so far.

Chris runs in a new direction, calling Isaac’s name again, and the relief he feels when he sees that curly mop of hair, alert, blue eyes turning his way as he runs up to Isaac sitting on the old wooden bridge, feet dangling over the edge, is so powerful he feels like he’s been drugged. 

If it weren’t for his somber eyes, that thousand yard stare Chris can’t seem to get off his mind, Isaac would look like a carefree boy kicking his feet in a stream somewhere. Instead, he looks so profoundly wounded that Chris wants to drop to his knees and beg for forgiveness.

“How’d you find me?” 

“You like water. No matter where we walk, we always seem to end up on this bridge.”

“Yeah... I guess it reminds me that things keep... moving or something. That sounds stupid.” 

“It doesn’t.” Chris sits down next to him, slipping his legs through the slats. “Elements are powerful things, especially in our world. It’s interesting that you’re drawn to it though, being a wolf, it’s... water is a powerful conductor for electricity. And we know what electricity can do to your kind.” 

“Everything comes back to that with you.” 

“I  _ know _ it’s not everything you are. I know that. I’m a hunter, Isaac. I’ve been trained to think about these things all the time, okay? Forgive an old man for his bad habits?” 

“You’re not an old man,” Isaac says, and finally the austere look in his eyes drops away, a hint of a smile popping up. “I was scared to come back. I thought you were gonna send me away.”

“What? Isaac… no. Never, okay? I would never do that.”

Isaac doesn’t say anything, and Chris can’t tell if he believes him. He supposes he’ll have to just keep showing Isaac how much he means it.

“Was I selfish to bring you here?” Chris doesn’t know if he’s asking himself or Isaac. Probably both. But he can’t get out of his mind what Isaac said about Chris dragging him all the way here without thinking it through. 

“I don’t think it’s selfish to not want to be alone.” 

“But  _ you _ weren’t alone. You had a pack. And I took you away from that.”

“Did I? I don’t see any of them rushing after me.” 

“In their defense, we did flee the country. Hard to reach people who don’t want to be reached.”

“Maybe. I just wish everyone didn’t leave me.” 

“Isaac, it’s not your fault when they do.” 

“Then why does it keep happening?”

“People have their own demons, their own failures. Derek made a pack for the wrong reasons and wasn’t the alpha he needed to be. Scott is... young. With a lot on his shoulders. And he’s grieving too. None of those things are your fault. Your father treating you the way he did? That’s on him. Not you. People... people drift in and out of our lives for all sorts of reasons, and for people like us? It happens even more. It’s just the nature of being involved in the supernatural world. It’s a risky place. A place always in flux. Unpredictable.” 

“I don’t know if I’m cut out for it.”

“You can make your life what you want, Isaac. You can carve a space for yourself. I used to think... I had so many strict ideas about the boundaries of our world, but I was wrong. Everything about it, every rule, every edict, every idea, is always shifting. I don’t see any reason why you should let other people’s ideas of what it means to be a wolf affect your own.” 

“Thank you. You always know what to say.” 

“Do I?” 

“This morning? Not so much, but yeah… usually.”

Chris does the only thing he can think of, the thing he needs to do to start to make this right again. 

He kisses him. 

Isaac makes a confused noise, but he opens up to Chris all the same, his tongue licking into Chris’s mouth.

“I—but you said—”

“Forget what I said. I’m a fucking idiot and a coward. I never should have said those things to you, and I never should have let you walk out that door. I’m so sorry, Isaac. I can’t lose you too.”

“You won’t.” Even though they both know what an impossible promise that is, it still feels good to hear it. A promise like that isn’t really about whether or not the fates will let you honor it. It’s about telling the other person how much you  _ want _ it to be true, how you’d do everything in your power to make sure it is.

“You don’t know how much this scares me,” Chris confesses.

“You think it doesn’t scare me too? Look... we’ve both had terrible luck, but... maybe two lightning rods for tragedy cancel each other out?” 

They both laugh. 

“Maybe. Come on, let’s get you home and clean you up. What the hell happened to you?” Chris picks a leaf out of Isaac’s hair. There’s a mud smear across his neck, and the left sleeve of his t-shirt is half ripped off.

“I uh… sorta collided with a tree and slipped. I’m not the best at dodging stuff when I take off like that.”

Chris hides his smile. He doesn’t want Isaac to think he’s making fun of him, but there’s something a little hilarious about a clumsy werewolf.

When they get back to the house, Chris leads Isaac by the hand upstairs, into the master bath with the big copper tub. Chris always wanted one of those, a nod to the old French monarchs, a rare extravagance he allowed himself when he was choosing things for the house, curating his space in a way he doesn’t do that often. 

It’s sort of strange that he only did that with a house halfway across the world. Not the one in Beacon Hills. Maybe it felt safer to do it here. Like no one could spoil it, tucked away so far from prying eyes.

Chris draws him a bath, and although Isaac raises a curious eyebrow, he strips and gets in. Chris slides in behind him, his thighs bracketing Isaac’s hips, and it almost feels more intimate than what they did last night. He carefully washes the mud from Isaac’s neck, wetting his hair and lathering shampoo in it. 

Isaac is tense at first, like he doesn’t know how to react to being cared for in this way, but then he relaxes, leaning back against Chris’s chest, letting out pleased little hums when Chris’s fingertips massage his scalp and lather soap on his skin. 

“Why are you washing me?” Isaac asks, his voice a little dazed and dreamy.

“Because I want to.” It feels good to take care of someone. He’s missed it. Chris has always been more comfortable when the focus is off him, even in his own life.

“Mmm, feels nice.” Isaac reaches into the water, his hand finding its way onto Chris’s thigh. “I love it here.”

“France?”

“France, the house, you… all of it. Can we stay here?”

Chris smiles wider than he thought possible, kissing Isaac’s wet neck before grabbing the sprayer attached to the faucet, rinsing the shampoo from his hair. 

“If you want to, sure.”

“Could we get animals?”

“Like what? A dog?”

“No like… there’s all this farmland. I don’t know… goats? Chickens?”

“You want to be French farmers now?”

“I dunno. Maybe…” 

“Sounds like a bit of an idyllic fantasy.” 

“Why not though?” Isaac looks at Chris over his shoulder, naked and pure and gorgeous, wet curls against his forehead, and Chris can’t imagine dashing his dreams. Chris is a pragmatic man. He’s always been. But maybe this is what happens to practical men who lose everything. Maybe they go soft and idealistic because they have nothing left to lose. Why not go all in? 

“Want to make cheese and open a rare book store too? Go all the way on European small town clichés?” Chris laughs as he says it, but then Isaac’s eyes light up with revelation.

“I don’t think it’s that crazy? I mean… all the Argent resources, the old rare texts, the artifacts. We could have the weird shop all the kids whisper about.”

“You wouldn’t get bored? That’s a quiet life for a young wolf.” 

“What? No…” Isaac’s eyes darken a bit, an expression Chris knows by now. It means Isaac wants to make sure he’s being taken seriously. “When Derek made me like this, I was just looking for a way out. I didn’t want this… I didn’t want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. The price is too high.” 

They both go silent, and Chris holds Isaac close in the warm water, kisses Isaac’s pulse point just to feel his beating heart under his lips. He knows they’re both thinking of Allison, Erica, Boyd, Victoria, all of it. Chris thinks about what it was like when he was Isaac’s age, Gerard thrusting an unwelcome destiny on him, a rough road he had no choice but to travel. What would he have done if not that? 

Maybe it’s time to figure it out. 

He thinks he might like to see Isaac content amid dusty books, stretching to reach a leather bound volume on the top shelf, dust motes swirling in the sunlight, catching on the gold in his hair. He sees afternoons with tea and jam and an expansive garden and blue skies. He thinks he could be happy like that. Chris can’t remember the last time he let himself daydream. It feels good to do it again.

“What about you? Won’t you get bored not fighting against the next big thing? That’s sort of been your whole life.” Isaac twines their fingers together, lifting Chris’s hand out of the water, kissing the thin skin of his wrist. It’s the softest touch, and Chris is positively melting underneath it.

“No… I gave all that up before this. The only reason I came back to it is because Allison made me realize it could be something else if I wanted it to be. That we could have our code, our own purpose, instead of what history dictates.” And now that she’s no longer around… Chris doesn’t want to go it alone.

“Is it… wrong that I miss her, but I… feel the way I do about you?” 

“No. I’ve tortured myself with it a lot. You probably figured that out from this morning. But the thing is, this isn’t that uncommon.” Chris can’t help but feel like the guilt Isaac is voicing is partly his fault, that he instilled it with that conversation in the kitchen. Hopefully, he can assuage his fears a little.

“What do you mean?”

“People with shared grief finding comfort in each other. Widows marrying the brothers of their lost husbands, bonding over something no one else can understand.” Chris used to be judgmental about people who found themselves in those situations, but now he understands what drives them into each other’s arms. Isaac can never quite know the monstrous all-consuming shape of what Chris went through, what he’s still going through, but he’s been there with him the whole time. “I’m so sorry, Isaac.”

“For what?”

“For turning you away this morning.”

“You don’t have to keep apologizing for that.”

“I do. Sleeping with you and reacting like that… you deserve better.” He hates himself for playing with Isaac’s emotions. For several heartbreaking reasons, rejection is a very big thing to Isaac, and Chris never meant to add to that list of disappointments. He was just trying to do what he thought was right. 

“I understand though. I mean, it’s not like you didn’t have a point. I just… didn’t care about those things. I still don’t. I just want this. No matter what.” Isaac turns his head and gives Chris a long, deep kiss.

“Me too.” Chris kisses him again, his hand sliding down Isaac’s wet chest, under the water and onto his stomach. By the time Chris’s fingers wrap around Isaac’s cock, they’re both panting into each other’s mouths, the water growing cold while their bodies grow hot. “Let’s get out of here.”

Isaac nods quickly before standing up, and Chris waits a moment before following him, just enjoying the view of Isaac stepping out of the bath, the sharp jut of his shoulder blades, the perfect curve of his ass, the damp hair around his hard cock.

“You watching me?” Isaac asks with a smirk as he towels off.

“Always,” Chris says as he gets out of the tub.

When they get to the bedroom, Isaac lies down on his back like an offering, his gaze nervously shifting from Chris’s eyes to his body. He’s all ivory skin and lean muscles, pink cheeks and gleaming eyes. He’s Chris’s for the taking, and Chris intends to savor every morsel.

He starts at Isaac’s legs, scraping his teeth along the soft skin on the insides of his thighs, sucking marks there that disappear all too quickly. Still, every response from Isaac is proof enough: the soft moans, his back bowing off the mattress, his hands in Chris’s hair. Chris licks along the length of Isaac’s cock, wanting to slow down but unable to stop himself from swallowing him down, wanting to be so full he can’t think anymore, can’t talk himself out of this again.

Isaac is more than appreciative, gasping Chris’s name, his hips bucking up until Chris puts his hands there to steady him. He knows Isaac is stronger than him. It’s not like Chris could keep Isaac pinned to the bed if Isaac didn’t want to be. But under Chris’s palms, Isaac’s hips stop moving. 

Chris keeps mapping Isaac’s body with his lips and his fingers, Isaac’s stomach quivering under his mouth, his nipples hard and rosy between Chris’s fingers. 

“Do you want me to stop?” Chris asks when he finally reaches Isaac’s mouth, his arms caging Isaac’s shoulders as he lies between Isaac’s legs. Isaac hooks a knee over Chris’s hip, pulling him even closer.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Isaac quirks an eyebrow, his eyes lust-drunk as he ruts against Chris, desperately seeking friction. 

“I’ll take that as a no then?” Chris laughs.

“Chris, if you don’t keep going, I swear, I’ll—”

Chris kisses away his doubts, fumbling for the nightstand drawer with blind fingers, not willing to stop kissing Isaac for even a second. What if he moves, and Isaac just flies away on the wind like a dream?

“Do you want me to fuck you?” Chris whispers in Isaac’s ear as his hand finally closes around the lube.

_ “Please. _ Pleasepleaseplease, Chris,” Isaac whines, suggestively spreading his legs. “You don’t have to, um… I mean, you can’t really hurt me much so—” Isaac says as he watches Chris coating two fingers in the sticky substance.

“I’d like to take my time with you. If you’re okay with that?” 

Isaac gives a shy nod, and Chris reaches down, fingers dipping between Isaac’s cleft. Isaac draws his knees up a little, and Chris’s fingers find his hole, rubbing circles across the puckered flesh until he sees Isaac’s tense muscles relax. He wants Isaac to enjoy this, and although it’s been quite a few years since Chris has done this, he remembers that the body’s instinct is to tighten up. He needs Isaac soft and pliable. Ready to accept him. He pushes his fingers in, stopping when Isaac flinches a bit, his eyes flitting up to meet Isaac’s icy blues. Isaac nods again, and Chris pushes the rest of the way in, working in a slow rhythm, in and out but only barely, only enough for Isaac to get used to the feeling.

“Could you—yesterday, you said… you called me…” Isaac bites his lip, too nervous to ask for what he wants, but Chris can read between the lines. Isaac needs a little assurance to melt away his misgivings, a bit of sugar sprinkled on top of the pain so he can let go.

“Are you okay, sweetheart? Am I hurting you?”

The reaction is instant, every inch of Isaac sinking into the sheets, loose and fluid and happy.

“No, you’re not—it’s good. I’m just… nervous,” Isaac admits with a crooked smile.

“That’s okay. We’ll go slow, and you just tell me if it hurts too much or you want me to stop, okay? I’m going to take good care of you, baby. I promise,” Chris murmurs in between kisses, and Isaac is getting more comfortable with every passing second. His uncertain little grunts are turning into breathy moans, and Chris can see the moment when he hits that spot. Isaac’s mouth drops open, his eyes squeezing shut as he clutches at Chris’s shoulders. “Right there? Does that feel good, sweetheart?”

_ “Ah— _ yes,  _ fuck. _ Chris, I—” Isaac gives up on words, letting his head fall back onto the pillow, a little laugh of surprise leaving his mouth. 

“You’ve never touched yourself like this?” Chris asks, stroking across that spot again before going back to pumping his fingers in and out. He doesn’t want to overwhelm him. Maybe someday he’ll just stroke and stroke and stroke until Isaac can’t stand it, until he’s so overstimulated, the head of his cock angry and red and begging to come, but right now, he wants to ease him into it.

“N-no.” Isaac looks into Chris’s eyes, and Chris wonders if Isaac is having the same awestruck thought he is. How special it is that he’s giving Isaac this, teaching him the secrets of his own body. “I want—I wanna make you feel good too.” 

“I do, baby. I love touching you like this. I wish you could see yourself right now. You’re so fucking beautiful.” Chris tries to commit this image to memory: Isaac flushed and moaning, thrusting back onto Chris’s fingers, his damp hair clinging to his forehead, lashes fluttering against his cheeks, his pretty pink lips. Chris can’t wait much longer, and he doesn’t think Isaac can either. He removes his fingers and coats his cock in lube, kneeling between Isaac’s legs. “Still okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Isaac nods impatiently, and Chris gently pushes his thighs forward, spreading him open even further as he lines up and pushes in.

Chris watches Isaac’s face as he slowly slides in, ready to stop if he needs to, but Isaac is watching with rapt attention, staring at the point where their bodies are now joined, nothing but pleasure and urgent need written in his features. 

“Fuck…” Isaac says, a soft exhale that’s barely a word at all. He meets Chris’s eyes, flashing his beta gold, and Chris knows the time for patience has passed.

Chris starts to thrust in earnest, and it’s been so very long that Chris is worried he’ll just start to take, take, take and never stop. There are things you don’t know you miss until you have them again, and then it’s like the gate has lifted, everything rushing back full force. 

“Do you—does it feel good?” Isaac asks, his brow knitting together, and Chris finds that insecurity unfathomable. How could Isaac ever doubt that Chris is consumed and so ecstatic to be there, he never wants to leave?

“God, of course it does. You have no idea how good you feel around me. Tight and hot and perfect and all mine. You’re all mine, aren’t you, baby?”

_ “Yes,”  _ Isaac moans, burying his face in Chris’s neck and scenting him, a deep, reverent inhale, and Chris is dizzy from this simple act of devotion. It means everything somehow. “Fuck—I love this. I love feeling you inside me.”

Chris wants to make it last, but he can feel everything cresting inside him, closer and closer with every thrust, every lovely noise coming from Isaac’s mouth. He reaches down to fist Isaac’s cock, and Isaac clings to him harder, his voice hot and insistent in Chris’s ear as he begs for Chris to keep fucking him, to make him come. 

When Isaac spills between their bodies, he bites down on Chris’s shoulder with a growl, the wolf shining through as his cock jumps in Chris’s hand, his ass clenching around Chris’s dick.

“Isaac,” Chris cries out as he comes, the sting of Isaac’s teeth still on his skin, spurting deep inside him, feeling a perverse sense of ownership from marking Isaac like that, filling him up. He collapses on top of him, and Isaac lazily runs his fingers through Chris’s hair, planting a kiss on the top of his head. 

Eventually, Chris rolls off him, and Isaac curls into his side, his head on Chris’s chest.

“Have you done this before?” Isaac lifts his head enough to look at Chris. “I mean... I know you have, but…” 

“With a man?” Chris finishes for him.

“Yeah.” 

“It’s been a very, very long time, but yes.” 

“Who was he?” 

“A friend.” 

“You’re really big on brevity, huh? Look, the strong and silent thing is kinda sexy, but sometimes I  _ do _ want to hear about you.” Isaac smiles and props himself up on one elbow, his cheek leaning against his fist as he looks down at Chris. 

“Sorry. I haven’t... I guess I haven’t talked about myself like this in a while.” For most of Chris’s life, his connections have largely been hunters and their cohorts, business-like exchanges of intel to further his missions. When was the last time he had a friend just for the sake of it? The kind of friendships where people sit around and talk about things like this? There have been a few “friends” for show, an effort to keep his cover so no one in Beacon Hills got too suspicious, but there hasn’t been anything this genuine in far too long. “It was in college. Predictable, I know.”

Isaac’s smile widens, and seeing how thrilled he is to get a crumb of information about Chris’s past makes him want to share more. 

“What was he like?” 

Chris closes his eyes and conjures an image of a young man with a musical laugh and piercing eyes. It’s been so long since he’s thought about him. It takes a while for the memory to fill in.

“A little like you. Quiet but willful. Intuitive. An observer. Rough around the edges but kind underneath it all. Beautiful.” Chris reaches up to cup Isaac’s cheek, running his fingers along his pouty lips. Isaac grabs Chris’s hand and kisses his palm, the calloused pads of his fingers. Chris feels it everywhere. 

“I’m not any of those things,” Isaac laments with a sigh, and Chris clasps his chin in one hand, turns Isaac’s face toward his.

“Yes, you are. You’re all of that and more.” Chris kisses him and hopes that someday Isaac will see himself the way he does.

“So… you know I’m gonna be kind of insatiable now, right?” Isaac asks, looking at Chris’s chest as he traces his fingers across a scar on the right side. “Cause that was amazing, and we’re gonna need to do it so many times, I lose count.”

Chris laughs and folds his hands behind his head.

“I figured that, but take it easy on me. Little harder to go endless rounds if you don’t have the healing factor.” Chris never gave much thought to the effect of healing powers on refractory periods, but then again, this is the first werewolf he’s slept with. He thinks about how wrecked he’ll be after a couple of weeks of trying to match Isaac’s stamina; he says a silent prayer for his future self. Still… he can’t think of a more enjoyable way to get exhausted.

“How’d you get this one?” Isaac asks, still tracing the same scar.

“Werejaguar. Almost a decade ago.” Chris’s eyes drift over to Isaac’s torso, a jagged line in nearly the same spot on his body. Chris touches the tip of his forefinger to it. “We almost match.”

Isaac’s face immediately changes, all the mirth drained from his eyes, replaced by primal fear.

“Did you father do that to you?” Chris doesn’t want to pry too much, but he also knows from experience that sometimes it’s better to talk about the ghosts that haunt you. It can weaken their power over you. If Isaac shuts down, Chris will back off without hesitance, but he figures it can’t hurt to simply offer an ear and see what happens.

Isaac moves, coming to lie between Chris’s legs, one arm over Chris’s stomach, his chin resting on top of it.

“You remember when I freaked out in the kitchen? When I broke that glass?”

Chris nods and waits for Isaac to continue.

“One time, I broke a glass when I was doing the dishes, and he… he picked up one of the shards and slashed it across my skin. That’s how I got that scar.”

Chris hauls him up by the shoulders, bringing him closer so he can give him a kiss.

“My sweet boy,” Chris whispers, brushing a stray curl from his forehead. “I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again.”

“You can’t promise something like that.”

“Maybe not, but I can promise I’ll do everything in my power to keep you safe.”

“Okay,” Isaac chokes out, tears beginning to spill from his eyes. 

Chris hugs him close and strokes his back.

“Shhh, I’ve got you. I’ve got you, sweetheart. I’m going to take care of you for as long as you let me, okay?”

“Please don’t change your mind,” Isaac sobs into Chris’s neck, and Chris hates himself for planting seeds of doubt earlier. He knows now that he’d be utterly miserable if Isaac left.

All he can hope to do is love him well enough to banish those fears. To prove what he feels every day that they’re together.

He doesn’t say the word yet. It’s a delicate balance, loving Isaac and trying not to spook him. 

And Chris doesn’t know if he’s ready yet.

  
  


***

  
  


“What’s all this?” Isaac asks as he comes into the kitchen, finding a candlelit table filled with food.

“A belated birthday dinner. I know it’s kind of blasphemous to make Italian comfort food in France, but I had a feeling you’d like bolognese better than cassoulet.”

“You didn’t have to do this,” Isaac protests, but he’s grinning all the same.

“I wanted to,” Chris insists, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek before they sit down to eat.

Later, after they’ve spent a couple languid hours in front of the fire, Chris indulging every excited question Isaac asks him, telling him all about the kind of boy he was and how he became the hunter man who lost his way, they go upstairs.

Isaac rides him, and Chris doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything more beautiful. Isaac is on top of him, eyes closed in bliss, hips rolling until he finds the angle he wants, bouncing up and down with the strength of his powerful wolf thighs, and Chris loves seeing him regain control. So many people in Isaac’s life claimed dominion over his body. His father, cutting and bruising Isaac’s skin. Even Derek, transforming Isaac into something useful for his own gains. Seeing Isaac take his pleasure, nothing timid or tentative about it, finally living in his body and treating it like something that belongs to him, almost makes Chris cry.

_ Yes, _ he quietly thinks,  _ this is your body and your pleasure and no one will ever take that away from you again. _

  
  


***

  
  


“When Allison got older, she wanted a bay window. Somewhere to sit and read. I always meant to build her one, but I never got around to it,” Chris says one day as he watches Isaac read. Isaac has been rapidly devouring every book in Chris’s library, everything from Colette to Kerouac. Sometimes Isaac reads aloud to him before bed, a reminder that they’re settling into domestic ritual so easily these days. Chris loves it.

Isaac chews thoughtfully on his lip. He sets his book down in his lap.

“Then let’s build her one,” he finally says, and Chris is so touched, he doesn’t know what to say.

They build the bay window in Allison’s old room, letting the light stream in and shake the room from dormancy, everything aglow and vibrant once again.

Maybe it’s silly, but even if the window is coming all too late, Chris feels like he’s honoring her with it. He looks over at Isaac, smiling at their handiwork, and he knows he feels the same.

  
  


***

  
  


They keep walking the grounds and fixing up the house here and there. They cook wonderful meals, and Chris teaches Isaac a little French so he can start to interact with people in town more often. They make love whenever they want, and when Chris broaches the subject of how they fled the country before Isaac could graduate, he snarkily replies, “I bet the Argents have been forging documents way more complicated than high school diplomas for decades.”

“There’s no replacement for learning things,” Chris sighs.

“Then teach me things! I’m listening,” Isaac retorts.

So Chris does. 

He teaches Isaac how to hone his wolf senses and how to anticipate an enemy’s every move.

“This isn’t exactly calculus,” Isaac says with a smirk as he dodges one of Chris’s blows in a training session.

“Maybe I agree with you about what’s more valuable,” Chris laughs.

It’s a nice life. It’s a quiet life.

Chris doesn’t feel the skittering underneath his skin that he used to, the boundless disquiet that kept him searching for the thing that would fill the widening void inside him. These days, the void seems to be shrinking into nothingness.

And for once, he’s not even fretting about whether or not that will last.

  
  


***

  
  


When something does finally burst their bubble of pastoral peace, it’s not at all what Chris thought it would be.

He hasn’t heard from anyone in Beacon Hills since they got here, and this… this isn’t the news he expected. How could he?

_ Kate is alive… and out for blood. Need your help before she kills anyone else, Argent. _

That’s all it says, but Chris knows Scott. He knows he wouldn’t have reached out if there wasn’t something else going on, and Chris has a pretty good idea of what that might be. If Kate is alive, she didn’t achieve that “naturally,” and if a human Kate was a loose cannon predator who burned a whole family alive without blinking an eye, well… Chris shudders to think what supernatural powers could do to amplify that. 

“Jesus fucking Christ, it’s hot. I thought it wasn’t supposed to get this hot here?” Isaac huffs as he comes in the door and into the living room, sitting next to Chris on the couch. “What’s up with you?” he asks, narrowing his eyes.

“Nothing. What do you want for dinner?”

“Chris… I can hear your heartbeat. And you smell anxious.”

The way Isaac can sense Chris’s emotions… it’s something Chris both likes and hates, depending on the situation. It’s comforting to be seen, but sometimes you want to be alone in the shadows with your thoughts. Sometimes, it makes Chris feel loved and held, a sign that Isaac cares enough to notice when something’s wrong, that he wants to help Chris whenever he can. But sometimes, having Isaac reach into his brain and pluck out the thoughts feels invasive and startling vulnerable, like Chris’s chest cavity is open on the operating table for all to see. 

“Chris, I can tell you’re—” 

“Isaac, just because you sense something doesn’t mean you should try to make someone talk. People have their reasons for wanting to keep things to themselves.” It comes out harsher than Chris meant for it to.

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—” 

“It’s okay. I’m sorry if I was too curt. I’m just… I need a little time to think, okay?”

“Sure.” Isaac nods, but his legs are jiggling and his fingers are drumming on the tops of his thighs. Chris can tell he’s anxious as all hell. Isaac doesn’t like the unknown. Even though they’ve been together for a few months now, there’s still a boyish panic in his eyes sometimes, the residue of his old abused life sticking to him like a fine powder he just can’t brush away. 

“You don’t have anything to worry about, okay?” Chris places a hand on Isaac’s shoulder, and his posture uncoils a bit. 

Isaac nods again and lies down on the couch, placing his head in Chris’s lap. Touch is grounding to him, Chris has noticed. He strokes Isaac’s hair until his legs stop twitching and his breathing evens out, his hand curling around Chris’s thigh.

  
  


***

  
  


He’s not sure how to tell Isaac. In fact, he’s not even sure  _ what _ to tell him. Chris doesn’t know much himself. All he knows is what he needs to do, and the sooner, the better.

“Come sit. I have to tell you something,” Chris says as Isaac rolls into the kitchen. Isaac skids to a stop, a flash of anger in his blue eyes. 

“The last time you wanted to talk in this kitchen, it didn’t go so well.”

“It’s nothing like that. It’s not about us. Just sit. Please?”

Isaac obliges, but he’s still hunched into a defensive stance, his eyes roaming the room instead of looking at Chris.

“I got a text from Scott. Kate is alive and apparently she’s still every bit as charmingly violent as she was before. He wants my help.”

“Oh…” Isaac says, sitting up straighter. “What’s happening? What else did he say?”

“No details, really, but… Kate is my sister. The destruction she’s wrought is my responsibility.  _ Stopping _ her is my responsibility.” 

“You want to go back to Beacon Hills,” Isaac says, and Chris can’t quite tell what Isaac’s feeling, his normally expressive face unreadable.

“I don’t want to leave France. I like our life here. I’m finally starting to feel like a person again, but I also can’t look the other way.”

“I understand,” Isaac says, slumping in his chair and looking at the floor. Chris puts two fingers under his chin and tilts his face up, bringing them eye to eye. 

“I don’t want to leave without you. But I also don’t want to ask you to go back if you don’t want to. I don’t ever want to ask too much of you. I dragged you to Europe, and now here I am trying to drag you back home again. I understand if you—” 

“I’ll come with you,” Isaac interjects, a little joy finally finding its way into his sad eyes. Chris doesn’t know if anyone in this world has ever had more soulful eyes than Isaac. 

“You sure? You can think about it first. You don’t have to—” 

“I want to go wherever you are. That’s not going to change. We can always come back here after. This can still be our place. I’ll miss it, but… I’d miss you more.” 

Chris knows “after” could be a long, long time. Hunts have a way of leading into each other, like perilous dominoes stacked and ready to fall. Danger begets more danger. Still, it’s a nice thought, and even if “after” takes longer than expected, it’ll come  _ someday. _

“I’m so relieved you feel that way. I’d miss you too. I don’t… I really don’t want to go back without you.”

“Good,” Isaac says with a smile, leaning forward to give Chris a kiss. 

“I love you, Isaac.” Chris has been so scared to say it, but how can he hold back anymore? This man is willing to follow him across the globe and back again, and not saying it out loud doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. He’s long overdue to say it.

“I love you too, Chris,” Isaac says, and Chris wishes Isaac could always look as happy as he does right now. “So… when we get back, are we going to tell people about us?”

“Might as well. I think they’d figure it out even if we didn’t say anything. Unless you don’t want them to know?” Chris’s heart skips a beat as he prays that Isaac won’t say that. 

“Fine with me. Just know that Stiles is probably gonna say no less than ten idiotic things, all of which he’ll probably think are super fucking funny.” Isaac rolls his eyes, and Chris laughs.

“True, but I have a feeling Scott and Lydia will tell him to shut up.”

“Good point.” Isaac gets up from the table and pours both of them a cup of coffee.

“Are you scared about what’s waiting for us in Beacon Hills?” 

“Yeah… but I’ve spent my whole life being scared. I used to be alone with that, but now I have my hunter to protect me.” Isaac takes a sip and smiles over the brim of his coffee cup.

“Thank you,” Chris says.

“For what?”

“Everything.” Chris gives Isaac another kiss, and although he’s definitely worried about what they might face when they land back in California, he has his werewolf to protect him. 

**Author's Note:**

> No idea if anyone will read this since I am very late to this fandom, and this is a weird pairing but... damn, the flavor of these two healing together? It should be a more popular pairing imo.
> 
> Please feel free to amuse me with possibilities of what the Beacon Hills gang would say when they find out Chris and Isaac are a couple. My current thoughts:
> 
> Stiles: Well, that's... progressive. And also not? Because it's kinda creepy?
> 
> Scott: Stiles...
> 
> Stiles: What? I'm just saying. There are like... a few levels of uncomfortable implications here-
> 
> Lydia: _Stiles_
> 
> Stiles: I mean, he could literally be Isaac's father-
> 
> Malia: STILES. Even _I_ know it's time to shut up.


End file.
